Weekend cooking: Blancmange

Recently I was reading a historical romance novel by Lisa Kleypas called Devil in Spring where the characters started talking about a dessert called blancmange. Now, this instantly bought me back to home economics classes in high school where we made this dessert. I've never made it or had it since, but I did then.

In the book, our leading lady, Lady Pandora, is a bit unusual for a lady of her day, and she is contemplating all the ways she would need to change in order to be  more ladylike:

What did ladies think about? Things like starting charities and visiting the tenants, and blancmange recipes—yes, ladies were always bringing blancmange to people. What was blancmange, anyway? It had no flavor or color. At best it was only unassertive pudding. Would it still be blancmange if one put some kind of topping on it? Berries or lemon sauce

Now later in the book, Pandora has had a change of heart in relation to this dessert:

Blancmange, incidentally, had turned out to be a revelation. Everything she thought she'd disliked before, its mildness, its whiteness, and lack of texture, turned out to be the best things about it.

In fact, it turns out to become the only thing in her schedule which cannot be interrupted

"Tell him to visit at his convenience," she said. "My schedule is quite flexible, other than my midmorning blancmange, which cannot be interrupted for any reason."

For those who don't know, blancmange is defined on Wikipedia as "sweet dessert commonly made with milk or cream and sugar thickened with gelatin, corn starch or Irish moss[1] (a source of carrageenan), and often flavoured with almonds." The origins of the word are French with blanc meaning white and mange meaning eat.

The first thing that stands out in that definition to me are the words Irish moss and even after reading the definition of that (it's a type of algae), I'm not convinced about it's usage, but apparently it is used as a thickener in desserts around the world. Anyway, I digress.

I did find myself wondering about how it is that blancmange is not ever talked about and yet every smart restaurant has a version of pannacotta on their menu.There is a difference between the two, in that blancmange is generally made using thickeners that need to be cooked and pannacotta generally uses gelatin as the setting agent and isn't cooked.

Maybe it is something to do with the word itself. I say it as bla-monj which in my mind it the kind of sound that it makes as it come out of the mould!

Have you ever tried blancmange? Or flummery? When I was writing this post I kept on coming across references to flummery as well.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.

This week ...

I'm Reading....

I decided that I wanted to read a book that I could get completed engrossed in. After thinking about some options, I decided that it was high time that I read another Rainbow Rowell book. There is a slight flaw in this plan as I had absolutely no time whatsoever to just sit and read over the weekend but never mind.

I am enjoying Fangirl, even though as an Australian we don't really do the college thing in the same way. It is a little interesting in terms of location though because if my son had of gone back to US college this year he would have been going to a college in Nebraska which is where this book is set.

I have long been a fan of the idea of stories with stories which this book has because Cath, the main character is a massive fan of a series called Simon Snow, even writing fan fiction. I do find it a bit odd that Rainbow Rowell has then gone onto write two Simon Snow books. Will I read them? Most likely. Do I still find it a bit odd? Yes

I also finished reading Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas. This is part of the  Ravenels series. I enjoyed the book, although I though that the subplot at the end came out of left field a bit, but overall another solid read from this author. I did love that we got to see Sebastian and Evie from Devil in Winter (review here). The hero of this book is their son, and so we got to see the family life that they have build together.

I'm watching....

We finished watching The Witcher and also Friday Night Dinners, so now we wait for new series of both of those.

We have also been watching The Good Place over the last couple of years. Now we wait patiently for each new episode, knowing that before long there will be no more because this series is the last.

I guess that means that we need something knew to watch. Any recommendations

I'm doing...

Over the weekend we went to a big outdoor concert and then to the theatre. Very cultural!

Every summer there are a series of big outdoor concerts that take place at various big wineries. There is usually a good mix of international stars and local legends. This weekend we went to see a lineup that included a local band called Magic Dirt, then Birds of Tokyo, Paul Kelly and finishing with Cold Chisel. The last two are Australian legends, and I hadn't seen either of them live before.

I really enjoy Paul Kelly's music because he is a storyteller within his music, which I love. He is a voice for social justice issues, and he was phenomenal on stage. I am definitely keen to go and see him live again

Cold Chisel are an Aussie band who were huge in the 70s and 80s before going their separate ways. I had seen the lead singer, Jimmy Barnes, in concert several times but not the band as a  whole.  They have so  many iconic songs that had the crowd going wild!

A funny story to give you some idea of how entrenched Cold Chisel was back in the day. The first time I went to America was in 1993 and my friend and I were doing a Contiki tour of the south west corner (San Diego, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas etc). The first morning we got on the tour bus, the guide was talking about playing music during the tour. Basically everyone could send their cassette tapes (remember those) or CDs (fancy new technology!) and they would then be played over the course of the week. After everyone had done so, the guide said that she was somewhat puzzled as were the first tour she had done in 8 years where there were Aussies on the bus and no one had bought a Cold Chisel tape!!

The other thing we did this weekend was going to see the theatre of War Horse!  The puppetry was totally mesmerising and there were times that you had to remind yourself that they weren't real horses on stage. The story can't help be somewhat bleak given the subject matter, but there were moments of light relief, mainly from the goose.

I'm glad we went to see it this time it was here!


I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date

Weekend Cooking: Obsessed with Bakeitbox

A couple of years ago I started buy Bake It Box which is a monthly box where you get sent instructions, tools (such as disposable baking trays, food colouring and icing tips) and all the dry ingredients in order to make a bake that I would most likely never choose to make by myself.

Every time I complete a bake I put the printed instruction into a display book, and recently, I realised that my book is full! Now that means I get to start a  new book!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Margaret Wuestenenk (@margreads) on Jan 3, 2020 at 11:10pm PST

This week I thought I would share what I have made since starting on my Bake It Box journey. Just looking through all the photos reminds me of how delicious they all were and that there are several that I am thinking I should make again one day!

Mirror Glaze Heart Cake (Red Velvet Cake with cream cheese frosting and a mirror glaze). I posted about making this cake here.

Pattern Swiss Roll Cake (Sponge with salted caramel cream filling)

Vanilla Custard Cake (posted here)

Marbled Sugar Cookies

Burger Cake

Lemon Meringue Mousse Cake

Elderflower and Lemon Cake

Chocolate Chess Tart

Number Cookie Cake

Spooky Ghost Yoghurt Cake (Yoghurt and Raspberry Cake)

Emoji Cookie Dough Cake

Chocolate Drip Cake

Gingerbread Wreath Cupcakes 

Pull Apart Monkey Bread

Tres Leches Cakes

Heart Pinata Cookies (see the inside of these cookies here)

Coconut and Lime Cake

Black Forest "Choc Bar" Cake

Russian Honey Cake (see the steps involved in making this cake here)

Red Velvet Santa Cupcakes

Admittedly, this is an Australian company, but I am sure there would be similar options elsewhere. I have recommended this to lots of people as something that is really fun to do!

I do still have a few boxes here to make, which doesn't stop me from still anticipating each new box as it is announced!!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.

Top 10 Tuesday: Most Anticipated Book Releases for the First Half of 2020

In my quest to find ways to try to get myself into blogging I thought I would participate in this week's Top 10 Tuesday meme as hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. The theme this week is the books you are excited about in the first half of the year. I don't know if I can join in on the topics on a regular basis and I didn't come up with ten books but never mind!!

Here are the top 8 books I'm looking forward to

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel - The third book in the Wolf Hall series about the life of Thomas Cromwell

The Switch by Beth O'Leary - The Flatshare by this author was my sole 5/5 read in 2019 so I am very much looking forward to this book

Hid From Our Eyes by Julia Spencer Fleming - It has been 7 years since the last instalment in the Rev Clare Fergusson/Russ van Alstyne series which is one which I was well and truly invested in back in the day

The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan - The next book in the Cormac Reilly crime series set in Galway

The Queen's Bargain by Anne Bishop - Another long wait for this book, this time 9 years. In fact, I'm not sure that I even thought that there would ever by another book in the Black Jewels series but here it is!

Something to Talk About by Rachael Johns - Australian author Rachael Johns has been one of my go to authors for a few years now, and I'm sure that this book won't disappoint

The Land Beyond the Sea by Sharon Kay Penman - Confession time. I have loved so many SKP books but despite that I am actually quite behind on her books. Doesn't stop me being excited about a new one though!!

The Women's Page by Victoria Purman -I really enjoyed the Land Girls and The Last of the Bonegilla Girls by this author. This time the author is focusing on the lives of women in the immediate aftermath of WWII.

What upcoming releases are you excited about?

This week I ...

I thought I would see if I could come up with a way to post on a regular basis so the plan will be to do a weekly post which will be what I am reading, watching and doing.


This week I'm reading

Somewhere over the last couple of years I have turned into the person who reads more while they are away than they do at home. This is confounding because I was never that person. I finished my book book on the plane on the way to Perth, and then I finished my ebook while I was away, and so then I was trying to choose something new to read from the books I already had downloaded so I started reading Listen to the Wind by Susanne Dunlap.

One of the good things is that this is historical fiction but with an unusual setting -  13th century France, the time of the Crusades and the persecution of the Cathars. I can only recall reading a couple of books with this setting. One was Labyrinth by Kate Mosse and the other was Daughters of the Grail by Elizabeth Chadwick.

What I didn't quite figure out until I read the authors note was if this book is supposed to be based on history or is a story that has a historical setting. Whatever it is, it was good plane reading.

In theory I am also listening to Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. I was listening to it while I was walking to work, but I haven't been doing either. Maybe when we go back to work!

This week I'm watching

We are currently watching The Whicher.

I was going to say I don't understand why people insist on comparing new show to previous shows, but that isn't quite true. Of course I understand that it is to try to draw in the same audience, but often it does the show in question an injustice.

This show is being compared to Game of Thrones and there are certainly similarities if you just consider they are both set in fantasy worlds, with lots of battles, humour, powerful people, oh, and sex. We are now up to the fourth episode and we are invested in the story. I am not sure I necessarily get what is going on but I am sure it will all come together by the end of the series.

We are also up to season 5 of the British show, Friday Night Dinner. A friend of mine mentioned this show a few weeks ago, and we have been watching it ever since. It makes us laugh out loud a lot! If you like British comedy, give this show a go.

This week I'm also

Contemplating the coming year and what we are hoping to achieve. There are more renovations on the cards, a holiday to plan, and more.

Today, we bought new dining room chairs in addition to the new dining room table and couches that we are waiting to have delivered.

We've been watching the news here with helplessness as so much of our country is beset by fire. There are no fires near me so we have only had a bit of smoke haze to deal with, but every morning I wake up in fear that this will be the day when the death toll rises astronomically. When the Black Saturday fires happened in 2009 we went to bed knowing that there had been a few deaths and when we woke up there were more than 200 deaths. Of course, even one death is too many, and my thoughts are with those that are already mourning the loss of their loved ones, and those who have lost their homes.

Best books of the 2010s

Whilst I have not been reading anywhere near as much in the last half of the decade I was reading quite a lot for the rest of the time and while I haven't been blogging very well for a long time, I did still maintain my Excel spreadsheet which lists all the books I have read. I can't imagine stopping now given that I have actually been maintaining it since 2004!

A quick look at the spreadsheet indicates that in the 2010s I read 34 books that I graded as 5/5 reads.  When I look back now some of those gradings stand up better than others in that I remember reading them and still get warm and fuzzies when I think about those books. Others not so much.

In terms of stand out reads though, there are two books which I read and reread and gave 5/5 grades both times, which is unusual. In both cases, I have read the final linked books in 2019. In the case of The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta.  I listened to it again this year (for the fourth time) in anticipation of the release of  the next book in the series, The Place on Dalhousie. I guess it isn't a series as such, but it does feature all the same characters at different points in their lives. I also loved On the Jellicoe Road by this author

The other book that I read multiple times and graded as 5/5 each time was Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. I just finished reading the latest/final book in that series, Still Me, just a few days ago while I was on a plane. The other book I loved by this author was The Last Letter from Your Lover

In terms of authors,  there are several who appeared more than once on my list of 5/5 reads. As  I mentioned both of the above authors were there with more than one book but there were also:

Elizabeth Chadwick with Lady of the English and To Defy a King

Sara Donati with Into the Wilderness and The Endless Forest, the first and last books in the Into the Wilderness series.

Susanna Kearsley with The Firebird, The Rose Garden and The Shadowy Horses.

For fun, I thought I would mention that my first 5/5 read for the decade was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and the last one was The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary.

In addition to Melina Marchetta, the other Australian authors on the list were John Marsden (Tomorrow When the War Began),  Kimberley Freeman (Lighthouse Bay), Mary-Rose MacColl (In Falling Snow) and Hannah Richell (The Peacock Summer).

I wonder what my first 5/5 read will be this year/decade?

Weekend Cooking: Or Rather My Excuses for not Weekend Cooking

So last week I posted a recipe for gingerbread cookies which were totally  delicious. Wait.....not last week.... more than a year ago. How on earth has that happened?

It's not like I haven't had things to post about. In the last year I have continued my baking adventures, including making puff pastry for the first time, lots of cakes, biscuits and more. Probably not as much as in 2018 but to be fair, it was a busy year.

In 2019 I visited 5 countries, 4 Australian states, had 3 relationship statuses (with the same man), completed 3 renovation projects, changed jobs, my son came home from the US permanently, and those are just the highlights. I'm sure I could think of much more (for example, saw Keith Urban in concert 3 times including once in Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry) but that seems enough for now!

So let me expand on a few of those!

Back in May my wonderful partner and I headed off to the US on holidays. There  were several reasons for doing so. Firstly, my son was graduating from junior college,  I was meeting up with some online friends in New Orleans and it was Robert's 50th birthday and he wanted to do a cruise so the best way to combine these things was to cruise the Caribbean starting from New Orleans.

Pre birthday celebration dinner whilst on the cruise

Authentic diner experience for the actual birthday

During the course of the cruise we stopped off in Honduras, Belize and Mexico. In Roatan (Honduras) we spent the day on a chocolate tour, so we got to see the whole process from the pod to hand grinding beans to eating the chocolate we made. It would have been a good day regardless, but that particular day started with us buying an engagement ring and with Robert proposing, and ended with a swim in the Caribbean! A great day all round.

We had actually started planning our wedding prior to heading to the US, and on 1 November we were married on a beach in Vanuatu. It was just the two of us and it was perfect. Our wedding dinner was a three course meal prepared by the resort chef. On our last night in the resort we also had the most amazing seafood platter. Later in November, we had a party at our house to celebrate with friends and family, bonus being that I got to wear the dress twice.

This year we already have more plans for holidays, for renovations and more, but I intend to only have one relationship status this year!

My intention it to be posting about both food and books this year. It will probably be hard to reestablish the blog to any real degree but let's see what happens shall we.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.